Taiwan

Taiwan loves it baseball as much or even more than Japan and perhaps even the US, which has competing loyalties from pro football and the NBA. But it has been rocked in recent years by scandal and corruption that sent several players and even a politician to prison for fixing games.

Taiwan’s motto has always been Knowing China through Taiwan. The country recently picked up on an article implying that China may become the next area for U.S. drone operations and that drones will change roles from attacking enemy combatants to spying.

Cross-Taiwan Strait relations between China and Taiwan have thawed in recent years. China, who until the late 1970s was firing artillery shells toward the island nation, has supposedly taken a softer approach to what it considers a renegade or breakaway Chinese province.

The pace of China’s unprecedented economic growth has allowed the Chinese to broaden their horizons in regional and international affairs, much to the annoyance of its great western rival the US, but they are still under criticism for ‘unfair’ trade regulations. What gives?

Last year, Taiwan’s fertility rate became the world’s lowest, dropping from 1.03 in 2010 to a record low of just 0.9 in 2011. The government blamed the decreasing birth rate on people’s superstitions about which zodiac years were best for bearing children. It seems many people were waiting for the year of the dragon, which starts next week and is considered a particularly auspicious period to be born in.